


Cantaloupe Island

by Vashti (tvashti)



Series: Closet [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Jazz - Freeform, Male-Female Friendship, Music, Musicians, old fic, some proofreading we die liek mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 16:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16099850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvashti/pseuds/Vashti
Summary: Willow takes Buffy to one of Oz’s Friday night jazz band rehearsals.





	Cantaloupe Island

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written about…10 years ago??? Good gravy. Anywho, it’s been reviewed and edited for clarity, but the content is largely unchanged. If you see a typo or some major mistake, please feel free to mention it in the comments. And, of course, ask any other questions you may have.

“ _Most bands know more than three chords.” Oz  
_ “ _Yeah, but that’s just fruity jazz bands.” Devon_

“ _We have a marching jazz band?” Buffy  
"Yeah, but, you know, since the best jazz is improvisational, we'd be going off in all directions, banging into floats... scary.” Oz_

 

§§§

 

Knowing that she looked nervous – and feeling like an idiot because she knew she looked nervous – Buffy followed Willow down the narrow creaky stairway. Despite the dim stairwell, they seemed to be headed toward a surprisingly well-lit basement. Buffy did her best not to bend over and peak out at what was below.

There is nothing to worry about, she told herself. Willow wouldn’t lead us into a vampire den or something.

Not on purpose.

As if she could hear her friend’s thoughts, the witch in question turned around and glared at Buffy.

“What?”

“Stop thinking so hard!” she hissed.

Buffy’s eyes widened. “You really did read my mind?”

Rolling her eyes, Willow stopped on the stairs and whispered, “No! But I swear I can feel them. And if you grip the banister any harder it’s going to break, Buffy. It’s already creaking.”

“Oops?”

Willow sighed. “C’mon. They’re already starting.”

Still paused on the stair, Buffy’s eyes widened. “That’s live?” She hurried after the redhead, who was behind a solid looking steel door. “Shouldn’t you knock or something.”

“Ruin the groove.”

Buffy’s eyebrows rose. “Ruin the groove?”

Willow colored and ducked her head. “They just don’t like it.”

“No, tell me more about this ‘groove’ of which you speak.”

“Buffy!”

“You sound like an aficionado.”

Willow brightened. “Hey! Nice word usage.”

Buffy preened. “Thank you. I’ve been trying. Think anyone will notice?”

“You keep dropping SAT words like that and heck yeah. The geek boys will be all over— Oh! Music’s stopped!” Willow twisted the door handle – apparently not locked – and pushed her way in. Heads went up. “Hey all!”

A round of smiles and greetings went up from the gathering of… Buffy counted heads and came up with about ten, but people were starting to get up and move around now that they were between songs. Two people slipped past her and Willow to go stomping up the stairs behind them. Someone else approached.

“Wills.”

Buffy turned at the warmth in Oz’s voice. “Oz?”

“Oz!” Willow bounced on her feet. The two embraced.

“Hey, Buffy,” Oz said as he extended a hand to her from over Willow’s shoulder.

The redhead giggled.

“Didn’t know you were into jazz.”

Buffy took his hand. “Generally speaking, not so much. Been writing on yourself again Oz?”

Willow broke from his embrace and took the hand in question in her own, studying it.

“There was a paper shortage on the quad this afternoon.” Oz shrugged.

Willow shook her head. “So long as there are no numbers from hot girls somewhere in all this…this.”

“What is the meaning of this phrase ‘hot…girls…’?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “You two crazy kids.”

“Hey Oz!” a woman called out.

He turned at his name.

“Jazz is improvisational, not self-playing.”

Giving them both a quick half-smile, and Willow’s hand an affectionate squeeze, Oz left them to take his place on the other side of the room. “So you say, Lexie, but I think you’re not giving the instruments enough credit.”

Buffy lost the rest of their conversation as she followed Willow across the room to, what looked like, the corner section of someone’s sofa. “Best seats in the house?” she asked.

“Definitely the most comfortable.”

“Works for me,” Buffy said, shrugging.

Comfortably snug, their school bags tucked under their seat, both young women turned their attention to the band. Buffy leaned over and asked Willow who all everyone was.

“Oz you obviously know…” Buffy nodded. “…is on bass. The girl right in front of him—”

“The one he was talking to?”

“Uh huh. That’s Alexis, or Lexie. She has one of the lead guitars. The other lead guitar is Marco—”

“Two lead guitars?”

Willow nodded. “They trade off. You’ll see. Anyway, Norm is on drums.”

“Oooh,” Buffy purred, eyes lighting up, “Normy,”. She could see his wide green eyes from their seat, and the muscles in his arms played over themselves as he twirled a drumstick between his fingers. His dirty blond hair was cropped short but still managed to look disheveled and when he smiled… “Wills, you have to introduce me.”

“Nuh uh. First off, he’s way too young for you. Like way.”

Shifting in the sofa, Buffy turned on her friend. “No!”

“Totally.”

“Man!”

“You and every other person of the female persuasion who has walked in here. He’s a nice kid though. Imagine when he’s actually old enough to go to college.”

Buffy groaned, crossing her arms over her chest as she shifted back around.

“He’s also attached, so even if he was legal—”

Buffy shot a dark look at her friend. “Oh, just stop rubbing it in. He’s unavailable.”

“Sorry, Buff. Any-way… Um, on the keyboard is Camille. Oh! They also have a couple of singers. You saw them when we came in.”

“Those two that passed us and went upstairs?”

“Yup. Kyle and Skyler.”

“Wow, that’s randomly—”

“Rhymie,” Willow finished with a nod. “They know. They’re not amused. Which means, of course, the band teases them about it all— Oh! They’re starting!”

From where they were sitting, Buffy could see Oz’s fingers plucking at the bass’ strings. He was sitting on a stool, half crouched over the long black thing. It was weird hearing just the bassline – no drums, no guitars, no keyboard – but it was like he was pulling at whatever controlled her heartbeat. Without giving it conscious thought, her foot began to move to the beat he was creating. She glanced over at Willow and saw that her friend’s head was moving, short hair swinging, and realized that her own head was moving. Willow noticed her looking and smiled.

The drums came in then, soft and sibilant. Buffy turned from Willow, wondering how the heck Uber-Unattainable Norm had managed to make _that_ come out of the drums.

She leaned over. “Are those mini-rakes?” she whispered.

Willow raised a brow.

“Those things Norm’s using on the drums.”

“Oh! I think they’re called whisks or something?”

“Like egg-beaters?” That got her an elbow in the side. “What?” But Willow had given up on her. Rolling her eyes, Buffy turned her eyes back to the band.

And caught Oz staring at her. Buffy colored and silently promised to hold all comments to the end, thank you.

The guitars and keyboard came in then and Buffy’s mouth opened in an O of silent wonder. “Wow.”

“I know.”

This was so not the jazz her mom used to listen to. Buffy became distantly aware of her body swaying with Willow’s in time to the music. Her eyes drifted from player to player, lingering on Norm and then on Oz. Just as Norm’s muscles had moved while he’d fiddled with his sticks, Buffy noticed that pulling at the bass’ thick strings caused the muscles in Oz’s lower arm to jump and shift in time to the music. She was fascinated.

Then the two lead guitars moved into some crazy dueling solo she couldn’t have seen coming if it had been loaded on a freight train and she had been standing on the tracks. It felt like she had been run over either way. Their combined playing was steady, relentless, impossible to hold on to as it ran and skipped and made her want to get up and do something with her body, even as it pulled on her eyelids and tried to drown her in a wall of sound.

She felt herself beginning to succumb and found she didn’t mind surrendering. Oz’s eyes met hers and then they closed.

* * *

“Oh, wow,” Buffy breathed. The song had stopped.

“I know.”

Buffy’s eyes flew open. “Is it always like that?”

Willow grinned. “Sometimes it’s better.”

“Oh, wow.”

“I know.”

“And this is what you’ve doing with your Fridays all winter? When we weren’t fighting for our lives, I mean.”

“When it wasn’t the end of the world, this where I was,” Willow agreed. “Isn’t it great?”

Buffy gave her a friendly punch in the arm. “And you didn’t tell me!”

Willow punched her back. “You said you didn’t like jazz!”

“Apparently I don’t like my mother’s jazz.”

Shrugging, the redhead said, “They do classic stuff too. Some things just sound better live. So-o…” Willow nibbled on her lower lip. She glanced up and Buffy saw as her eyes touched on Oz, deep in conversation with the girl on keyboard. “Ya like?”

Throwing her hands up, Buffy made a rude sound in her throat. “Like? Love!” She threw her arms around Willow’s shoulder.

_“One, two, three, and…”_

This time, Buffy didn’t fight the pull of the music. She could sense movement in front of her, but in the darkness behind her eyelids the room had taken on an insubstantiality, had redefined it’s physical space, until she didn’t have a real sense of where people or things were. She almost didn’t have a real sense of the sofa beneath her.

At one point someone hovered in front of her – which she thought was extremely rude – but then they were gone and Buffy could put it out of her mind.

When the song was finally over, Buffy didn’t know whether she was going to melt into her seat or fly through the ceiling. “Are you sure it gets better than this Wills?”

No answer.

“Willow?” Buffy pushed herself out of the sofa-piece, looking frantically for her friend. Nothing seemed out of place. Heck, the band was mingling with the other people who were just sitting around and watching. “Maybe she went to the bathroom?” she mused to herself

But Willow’s stuff was gone.

“Buffy.”

“Cripes!” She jumped, hand over her heart, and turned around. “Oz! Jeez, like, don’t _do_ that!” she hissed. “What is it with you preternatural types?”

“Scaring the Slayer is the highlight of our day,” Oz said with such solemnity that Buffy stared at him really hard and went, “Really?”

Oz shrugged. “Eh…depends on the day.”

“ _Oz_. Anyway, where’s Will?”

“Emergency.”

“Something up with her parents?” She frowned in consternation, “They have her cell phone number?”

“No. Actually, yes they do have her number, but no. Not parents. Science lab.”

“Science…” Buffy’s brows drew together. “What kind of emergency can a Geology lab have? Volcano suddenly appear on campus, in which case I seriously think I’d be the better person to call in a situation such as this.”

“Uh, I think it had more to do with the Biology lab.”

“Biology—”

“Remember the rats that got out from their cages over the weekend last weekend?”

“Oh. Yeah. G-ross. So glad our dorms are on the other side of campus.”

Oz’s lips twitched. “You’d think the Slayer would be beyond rat-fear.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “This has nothing to do with being the Slayer and everything to do with being a girl.”

“Even after that one time when—?”

“Let’s not discuss and pretend that we didn’t?”

Oz shrugged.

“So, what’s the Biology lab rats got to do with the Geology lab?”

“Nothing.”

“Oz!”

“I didn’t say it was Geology. The computer labs. Someone found the rats.”

Buffy’s eyebrows came together. “So? What does that… Oh. Oooh. Ye-uck.”

“That was Willow’s impression, too. And since she has the keys to the lab at the moment.”

“Aw. Poor Wills. That so totally sucks. Now, no offense, Oz, but how do you know all this?”

“Well there was the backstory that I was already familiar with,” he said turning away from her and walking back to his bass guitar. “And I’ve been practicing reading lips.”

Buffy followed. “Seriously?”

“Kinda.”

“Dude.”

One of Oz’s shoulders went up as he crouched over his bass. Standing, he slipped it into his soft case. “Anyway, that kinda leaves you SOL.”

Buffy’s eyebrows came together. “Really? How do you figure that?”

“Well Willow had to take the car back to the dorm—”

“F—”

“So I figured you wouldn’t mind a ride.” Oz turned around, bass over one shoulder. The singers with the twin-y names were standing just outside the open door. Buffy could see them talking.

“Admit it, Oz, you can so totally read minds.”

“Eh…”

* * *

Oz made a smooth right turn, glancing as he did at Buffy. The wind through the open windows set her hair fluttering around her face. She pulled it out of her lip gloss – not for the first time.

“Sorry ‘bout the lack of A/C.”

“Huh?” She glanced up over at him. “Oh! Please, Oz, it’s no big. It’s just further proof that I really should lay off the uber-sticky lip gloss. Yesterday I got back to my room and discovered a bug had gotten stuck to my lips. So not joy.”

“Doesn’t sound fun.”

They lapsed into companionable silence.

Oz pulled up in front of Buffy’s dorm – well, as close as he could get without driving the van over the grounds. “Looked like you were enjoying yourself.”

He was glad he mentioned it. Buffy’s face lit up like a little gremlin inside her skull had just turned on the lights. “Ohmigod, that was amazing! Is it like that every week?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better.”

Buffy’s grin was overwhelming. “That’s what Willow said. Have I told you guys lately how cute you two are?”

“Eh…not this week.”

Laughing, Buffy hit the lock on the door. She reached across and gave him a hug. “Thanks for the ride, Oz. Woulda been a long walk back otherwise.”

“I dunno. You mighta had a chance to kill something on the way.”

“Gee thanks, Oz.”

“Always happy to be of service.”

“So…if I wanted to come back next week? Assuming something apocalyptic doesn’t come up.”

“Permanent invite. Short of that apocalypse thing.”

“They always seem to have the worst timing…” she said, pushing the door open.

Oz could only nod.

“Thanks again.”

“No big.”

“So big, Oz. So. Big. Sorta kinda huge even. Night!”

He watched her cut across the lawns until she was out of sight. He was glad Willow had finally convinced her to come. It had been a long time since he’d seen that light in Buffy’s eyes.

 

Fin[ite]


End file.
